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Monday, September 16, 2013

The Past Lives of Kakaako

Message in a bottle

Archaeological surveys being done before Kakaako adds another layer of development have yielded intriguing signs of the area's previous lives

By William Cole

September 15, 2013--Before Kamehameha Schools can
build a new high-rise Kakaako, it must dig into its past. Archaeological
surveys are required for redevelopment, and trenches dug in what’s known as
“Block B” off Keawe Street — where low-rise residential and ground floor
commercial units are planned — have unearthed some interesting finds from life
in 1800s Kakaako.

It’s a
history that wasn’t always pretty. Or healthy.

One
narrow round bottle pulled out of the ground in Block B contained “Mrs.
Winslow’s Soothing Syrup,” which originated in the 1840s for teething babies.

A bottle from “Block B” contained “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing
Syrup,” which originated in the 1840s to soothe teething babies. The formula
relied on 65 milligrams of morphine sulphate per fluid ounce and later was
labeled a “baby killer” by the American Medical Association.

Its
soothing effect — sometimes too soothing — came from 65 milligrams of morphine
sulphate per fluid ounce. The American Medical Association later labeled it a
“baby killer.”

In one
past incarnation, marshy and low-lying Kakaako was used for fishponds and the
production of salt, rice and taro.

In the
mid- to late 19th century, it was also a center for cemeteries and the
quarantine of smallpox, bubonic plague and Hansen’s disease (leprosy) patients.

Heading
into the 20th century, Kakaako was a sewage treatment and garbage dump and
burning site before it evolved again, becoming a place of cheap housing and
commercial industry.

As
Kamehameha Schools proceeds with ambitious housing and commercial redevelopment
plans spread over 29 acres and nine blocks, including seven high-rise towers,
archaeological digs into the already heavily developed area are bringing the
past back to life.

Another
underground find was a bottle for Vapo-Cresolene, a company established in 1879
selling a coal tar solution that was vaporized by a lamp and inhaled for the
treatment of “whooping cough, spasmodic croup and certain inflammatory throat
diseases,” according to an old advertisement.

The
bottle has rows of bumps denoting the contents were poisonous, a common
practice at the time.

Excavations
in Block B, bounded by South, Auahi, Keawe and Pohukaina streets — part of the
old Honolulu Iron Works site — yielded hundreds of late-1800s glass and
stoneware beer, liquor and soda bottles, as well as sake bottles and cups and
other household items of the day.

A
post-1850 rectangular blue and white china box was used for seal paste.

“If you
want to keep your beauty, put on seal paste,” joked Hallett Hammatt, president
of Cultural Surveys Hawai‘i, which conducted the archaeological inventory
survey for the Block B site and others.

An old
Chinese stoneware shoyu jug with a spout was found, and so was a small, clear
bottle that held sperm-whale oil — possibly for sewing machine use. Tiny
Chinese medicine bottles could have held morphine solutions.

Jon
Tulchin, an archaeologist with Cultural Surveys who worked on the Block B site,
said coral bedrock is down about 6 feet, the pre-contact Hawaiian era is 3 to 4
feet below the surface, and a layer of crushed coral fill is about a foot below
ground level.

“The
goal is to look at it all,” Hammatt said, adding that in this case, the
sprawling Honolulu Iron Works had a major impact on what was found in the
ground.

“In this
latest one, this Block B one, we’re focusing on the post-contact and the
bottles and the fill layers because with the Honolulu Iron Works and all the
disturbance that took place in that area, all those earlier layers get moved,”
Hammatt said.

Kamehameha
Schools said no iwi were found in Block B digs. Cultural Surveys also said no
traditional Hawaii artifacts were identified.

HONOLULU
IRON WORKS, near the intersection of South Street and Ala Moana Boulevard,
provided machinery for sugar mills and ship repairs.

A 1921
account of business operations by foundry superintendent F.J. McGrail said the
iron works was established in 1852.

“The original
small workshop has expanded into an immense plant of steel, brick and concrete
construction, covering about 10 acres, in which are employed more than 500
men,” McGrail reported at the time.

Tulchin,
the archaeologist, said Kakaako, with all its trash dumps, is known to have a
lot of old bottles and other household items buried in the ground because the
rubbish was used as fill.

But
Block B “was kind of the exception” with the hundreds of bottles found, Hammatt
said. “The other (areas) are not to the extent of this.”

Tulchin’s
theory is that as Honolulu Iron Works expanded toward Diamond Head from what is
now Waterfront Plaza, it might have used locally dumped trash for fill in the
Block B area, which could have seen construction in the 1920s.

In the late
19th century and into the 20th, crushed coral dredged from the Ala Wai Canal
and Honolulu Harbor
was deposited in Kakaako to build up the low-lying ground, he said.

The
bottles in Block B were below that fill, Tulchin said.

“So
based on the stratigraphy, they have to be probably closer to the 1880s time
period, because they would have been put down before they filled the area,” he
said.

Metal
objects rust, and Tulchin said the bottles in Block B were found in what looked
like “pulverized rusted dust” and were among structural debris from old
buildings.

Some of
the bottles are partially melted, likely indicating they were part of trash
that was burned first before it became landfill.

Cultural
Surveys collects samples of what it finds — which belong to the property owner,
Kamehameha Schools — and reburies the rest.

Trenches
were dug in parking lots and even through building interior floors in some
cases for the archaeological study, which will be reviewed by the State
Historic Preservation Division.

Old bottles
are highly collectible and potentially valuable, and the company has to take
steps to safeguard dig sites from bottle hunters, Hammatt said.

“We’ve
had situations where people have come in at night,” he said. “They’ve disturbed
the project not only from a construction point of view, but more importantly,
archaeologically — messed up what we are doing just to steal bottles. And they
are taking their life in their hands because they are in the bottom of a deep
trench.”

The
company tries to fill in an archaeology trench as quickly as possible, or post
a guard overnight.

KEKOA
PAULSEN, a Kamehameha Schools spokesman, said in an email that the trust’s
lands were originally received during the Great Mahele, or land division, by
Victoria Kamamalu, granddaughter of Kamehameha, and passed down through
inheritance to Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, founder of Kamehameha Schools.

Hammatt
said with Kakaako’s mottled history, archaeologists never know what they’ll
find.

The land
beneath what is now Waterfront Plaza was a cemetery from the 1700s or earlier
up to the early 1800s, according to a Cultural Surveys report.

During
the 1853 smallpox epidemic, patients were quarantined at a camp and hospital in
Kakaako, and more than 1,000 smallpox victims were buried in Honuakaha Cemetery
near the junction of South Street and Quinn Lane, the company’s research shows.

A branch
hospital and detention center for Hansen’s disease patients opened in 1881 in
Kakaako, and was described by a Franciscan sister as being like a prison. After
bubonic plague swept through Chinatown near the turn of the century, infected
patients were moved to quarantine camps at Kakaako, Cultural Surveys reported.

A 1927
aerial map showed Kakaako still having fishponds, salt pans and loi, with homes
spreading into the area from downtown.

“It’s a
mosaic landscape because there were the fishponds, there were home sites, there
were little sand dunes, there were salt pans,” Hammatt said. “There was a lot
of stuff going on, and it was all kind of mixed up. And so you dig one trench
here and you dig another trench 20 feet away, and it can be totally different.
It’s not a uniform buried landscape.”

The
Block B residential and commercial space is expected to be completed by 2016,
Kamehameha Schools said.

Another
project Diamond Head of Block B is dubbed “Salt” in deference to the salt pans
and at least one aspect of the myriad history that the trust is adding to in
Kakaako.

“These
lands have long played an integral role in the growth and vitality of Hono­lulu,
and the community we see emerging in Our Kakaako today is true to that heritage
— active, innovative, diverse, interesting,” Paulsen said.